My SIL is a competitive undereater and it's wearing me down

Most people will eating disorders are not at all vocal about it. They have deep shame, denial, secrecy, do whatever they can NOT to draw attention to themselves. This woman doesn't sound like that at all.
Let's not start throwing around the term eating disorder like people have started to do with OCD - oh I'm a bit OCD about that. Both are serious mental health conditions.

Awareness is good, but saying someone has a serious MH condition when they don't isn't helpful for those who do i.e. lack of understanding.

Young, beautiful thin women are given so much status that it must be difficult to have to get used to a different way of life when the looks fade. I suppose it’s her way of trying to maintain that status. I wonder what would happen if you told her that you had huge admiration for her restraint and self discipline. If you told her that she looks fabulous. just let her have that if she needs it. Let her win the futile competition. I wonder if she would leave you alone. Might be worth a shot. Otherwise, just leave her to it. We all have annoying traits.

My mum speaks like this, but about people on the street. Am sure she’ll be punched in the face at some point. It’s the faux camaraderie that gets me. ‘She doesn’t let it hold her back, not every large girl can pull off cycling shorts’. I feel certain she doesn’t mean it too, so is rather spiteful however you look at it.

Eating disorder and control issues. Poor her, not a happy bunny.

One of my sisters was anorexic - mostly due to my mostly harmless/well intentioned but somewhat batshit parents - and my Mum (probably the main protagonist in it all to be fair) hugged me once after hugging her and said " omg you're so big and fat and solid" or words to that effect.

I am 5'5 and a half and was a size 10.

She would make comments about people's weight all the time, the realised it wasn't PC in recent years and so started saying comical things like "she's a big girl, but fair play to her, she doesn't care, she's very confident, she's always dressed up etc etc".

One of my competitive undereating relatives once started a fire with her performative non-eating. She liked to put food on to cook, go away, let it burn and then make a huge song and dance about how she completely forgot about it because she was so unconcerned about food. She let it go on too long one day, the grill/hob caught fire and the smoke alarm wouldn't stop. I wasn't there but I heard about it later and the rest of the family was unimpressed enough that while she remained a competitive undereater, she didn't pull that particular shit ever again.

Can just imagine her simpering about how she just can't help eating so little while her family tried to put the fire out.

Yes because annoying the shit out of people with “ooooh I couldn’t possibly eat all that!!!” Will definitely fix the obesity crisis.

It’s not for anything other than to make the person saying it feel superior, it just makes them irritating rather than helpful.

I have to say I enjoyed your rant lol.

Though your poor DP.

That bollocks really damages people.

DP had it from as soon as he could remember because he was a healthy baby - but a healthy baby from two sides of teeny tinies, both male and female. They hid his baby photos because he looked massive when being held - well yeah, when you're a normal 9 month old being held by somebody not even 4'10" and about five stone, you're going to look like a changeling.

Stories at the dinner table of how massive he was that they took him to the doctors to ask if they should water his milk down and the doctor told them to wean him instead (so he got proper food), how they made him exercise all the time and how huge he was compared to everybody else's children....the photos of him as a kid didn't show a huge, obese lump of a child - he looked like his legs were two bits of string with knots for knees and he was easily head and shoulders shorter than everybody else.

They got their wish in the end. He developed an ED that still comes back every time he's round either of them. 'Oh, I've made extra potatoes, I'd only cook one for me but I know you eat so much more than I do', 'I can't eat more than half a (cherry) tomato, so you finish it off, I know you're always hungry', 'he just ate and ate and ate, a whole 8oz bottle of milk was gone in minutes and then he'd be complaining until dinnertime and wanting more than one vegetable,' <DP pushes away the single chicken wing he was toying with> 'Would you like half a crumpet? I can cut it up if you like' no he fucking wouldn't, he'd like three with butter instead of that watery spread shite

I'm made of sterner stuff - growing up being the monster child in my family of not quite so teeny tinies (4'11" - 5'3") and always hearing how fat and horrible I was for being over 6 stone with thunderthighs/tree trunks/not dainty like my half sister at 16 led to me deciding that anybody who is shorter than the average 11 year old in 1980 can fuck right off when it comes to comments upon food and size.

Yeah, we get it, you have to buy children's shoes because you're soo small, you have to use a toddler's cup because your hands are too tiny to manage a standard one, of course you're absolutely stuffed after a quarter of a Babybel and two Mini Cheddars. That's great, it makes you cheaper to feed...oh, shit, it doesn't apply to the amount of booze you can put away though, does it? Or the cream cakes you mainline when nobody's watching (which probably answers why you're a) type 2 diabetic and b) going fucking blind). Being small should not be your personality and identity, any more than you should try to make others be identified by not being as small as you.

My mom is now in her 80’s she has done this my whole life, she would hide food so I couldn’t eat it. She gave me a picture of a big fat woman ‘we bought this because it reminded us of you’ I was 16yrs about a size 12. She paid for me to do the Cambridge diet eating 300 calories a day just started nursing working shifts. Think it is a generational thing I have a colleague who is her 80’s does the same thing. Not until my 30’s did I realise I was eating to piss her off. I have been on steroids for 4 years & put on weight the first time she has kept her mouth shut regarding my weight the looks however she cannot help. You are not on your own OP.

I know someone very similar to your SIL.

It's exhausting, tedious and does put a dampener on any meal. She's not close enough that I have to endure her relentless 'I couldn't manage more than a starter,' 'that breakfast will do me all day,' 'I don't understand how you can still be hungry' often, but I try to avoid sitting next to her.

Please shore yourself up ahead of your next meal together by listening to Jonathan Richman's "I Eat With Gusto, Damn! You Bet"

No you don't.

I reckon nonplayer is either the SIL or a competitive undereater herself…

Once you realise that what people say is really about them and their issues you don’t take this kind of stuff personally

The OP isn't taking it personally. It is annoying her. As it would me.
I would continue to ignore though@OptimismvsRealism as hard as that may be. Order what you want, eat what you want and enjoy it!

Well, because you clearly want to tell me, repeatedly, how evil I am for recognising and disliking a disordered behaviour designed to make people miserable (and which succeeds, if the experiences on this thread are to be believed.) So all I ask is that you do it in IM. That way, the thread avoids a derail and I'm the only one who has to be bored by it.

@NonPlayerCharacter I don’t even want to talk to you at all, why on earth would I want to talk to you by PM? I’m not engaging further.

My SIL is like this but she is the size of a house so I don’t know who she is fooling, I always think she must have a secret binge eating disorder because she swears blind that she would never ever touch chocolate/biscuits/cake/dessert and can only manage the teeny tiniest portions and isn’t every one else so greedy that they can eat so much because she gets full soooo easily.

I feel sorry for her (but also hate her for different long and boring reasons).

Hate it when people make comments on what you eat, or how much or how quickly! So rude!

my MIL does this - mostly about the speed at which we eat. She is prob a size 16 and I’m a 10 - but she always bangs on about how quickly I eat and makes a point of eating so slowly and then telling everyone she can’t possibly finish her food.

she has told me repeatedly about the importance of eating slowly, I just tell her I enjoy eating quickly.

Yeah, I have. I'm hungry.

Please can you take this to IM if you really have to keep doing it?

@NonPlayerCharacter while they can't let go of a simple statement that most people look objectively more attractive when they're younger.

What on earth are you talking about? “Can’t let go of”? I answered that comment and it hasn’t been mentioned since. What are you on?

Your attitude to ED sufferers is quite revolting, clearly you have issues of your own.

She sounds just like my MIL! Every time we go out for a meal she talks about how calories on the menu are the best thing to happen, and how she is a size 6.

She also couldn't possibly eat a pudding and if goes out for brunch that's her done for the rest of the day!

Drives me mad OP but i can never think of a comeback at the time that is funny and not bitchy. Blergh.

I think you either completely ignore her and cut every comment dead or call her out and confront her with how utterly stupid, pathetic and boring you all find her.

My mum is still like this at 88 (and the vanity with it - though she was genuinely beautiful). A person’s worth is basically their slenderness in her opinion. She is also the food police. When I put on weight in my pregnancies she was unable to say one sentence to me without the word ‘fat’ in it. My now adult children confronted her about it and she hasn’t stopped but she is a lot better.

Don’t put up with it. It’s likely because she has very low self esteem and the rest of her life is fucked up but that’s tough.

I'm not going to take lessons on being disingenuous from someone who claims they wouldn't take ongoing competitive undereating personally even while they can't let go of a simple statement that most people look objectively more attractive when they're younger.

EDs are horrible, and the competitive undereaters I know and have known were absolutely trying to spread it. That's literally the point of trying to ruin every occasion with it and make everyone put the same importance on appetite and body size as they do. It might not be their fault but it's still obnoxious.

If you really want to continue to tell me at length how terrible a human I am, you have my full permission to do it in IM. Let's let the conversation here go back to competitive undereating.